Alberto, Not Again!

Now He's Bionic: yep, just when you thought all Alberto Contador had to contend with is a bunch of babies accusing of cheating the entire peloton by clenbuterol microdosing, now there's (wholly speculative and unsupported) allegations from the French that the child is mechanically bike-doping in the mountains, based, it seems, on (1) his suspiciously changing bikes at critical points in the Giro and (2) that long wire attached to a battery pack that Bjarne Riis sticks into Contador's top tube whenever he goes back to the team car for a "water bottle." Um, isn't it possible this is just a cheap-shot tactic to draw attention away from the fact that, a few stellar guys excepted, the French lately just plain suck? Hey--look--I think Andy Schleck's got spikes on his derailleur to take out the wheels of his competitors--that must be why we haven't won the Tour in 20 years!

Sportsmanship o' the Year Award: meantime, I see none other than Lance superenabler/RadioSkank overlord Johan Bruyneel says he thinks Contador is innocent and ought to ride the Tour de France, which is not only a gesture of great and benevolent kindness to his former wayward protege, but also, it can be surmised, an easy proclamation to change his mind on and immediately accuse the little !@#$%%$& of doping and destroying Lance and Johan's innocent faith should Alberto actually win the Tour again. Y'know, I am still dearly rooting for Levi--but Johan and his Machiavellian cadre of minions, not so much!

Forza, Ivan!: finally, though there may well be doubts at this point of the wisdom of Ivan Basso ditching his defense of the Giro in pursuit of his ever-elusive and Op-Puerto disrupted dream of the Tour de France, I gotta say, based on his Dauphine Ivan really got hosed by that crap training crash on Mt. Etna a few weeks back, and I'm exceedingly hoping, at least for livening-up-the-usual-Alberto-Andy-battle purposes, he rides into form enough in the first week of the Tour to keep himself a genuine threat for the podium. Or, accident aside, it could just be his regular-innocent-guy blood values causing the "problem"--what the heck was that stuff Schleck and those guys were mixing into their sports drinks again?